Frisian alphabet

The West Frisian alphabet consists of 23 characters.

Letters

The characters Y"(igrek)" and ij are not considered to be part of the alphabet. Y is considered as a form of I and ij is considered to be an I followed by a J while in written form only one character is used, for more info see IJ (digraph) Contrary to Dutch, West-Frisian words never start with ij and therefore the IJ never appears in the West Frisian language. The same applies to the V and Z. The C is only used in combination with ch and is also never used at the beginning of a word. ch is used to describe a voiced velar fricative while G represents a voiceless velar fricative and a voiced velar plosive. Furthermore the G is used in a digraph together with N to represent a velar nasal.

Diacritics

In West Frisian diacritic signs can be used with A, E, I, O, U, and Y. Letters with diacritics are not considered to be independent vowels, but are seen as letter-diacritics combinations. Used diacritical symbols are circumflexes, acute accents, grave accents and diaeresis marks. Diaeresis marks can be used with A, E, I, O, and U (ä, ë, ï, ö, ü) and mark diaeresis. Grave accents can be used with A, E, I, O, U and Y (à, è, ì, ò, ù, ỳ) and are used to identify stressed syllables and words. Circumflexes and acute accents are used to identify different sounds. They can be used with A, E, I, O and U (â, ê, é, í, ô, û, ú). In West Frisian different diacritics can't be combined on single characters.

Æ is seen as archaic, but can sometimes still be found back in names and old spellings.

External links

* [http://www.allezhop.de/frysk/staver_e.htm West Frisian spelling]
* [http://www.omniglot.com/writing/frisian.htm Omniglot]